Page 42 - Feb BNP ALL

Page 42 February 2016
The Present Past
Keeping Track
by “My Father’s Son”
When traversing the history of
small areas such as Thurmont and
its surrounding municipalities,
several names begin to be repeated.
Dissimilar to culture today, when
a family settled in an area, they
usually stayed in that area. Our
northern Maryland vicinity has
collected several names that have a
way of emerging from beneath every
stone overturned. These surnames
provided opportunity for progress
and growth within their lineage
and society alike. This should be
kept in mind for both this series of
articles and this attempt to track the
Monocacy Valley Railroad (MVRR),
and ultimately the Hagerstown and
Frederick Railway, from a civic
perspective.
Leonard R. Waesche and
“Fredericktowne’s” Dr. Steiner
Schley built the Monocacy Valley
Railroad, a four-mile stretch from
the Western Maryland Mainline
in Mechanicstown to the Catoctin
Furnace. Schley, having followed
in his father’s footsteps, was
a highly regarded pharmacist,
business owner, and advocate
for the Maryland School for the
Deaf. Schley’s seemingly peculiar
association with a railroad venture
was extenuated by his résumé, but
when explained, the connection
between the two was not so odd
after all.
The year was 1886; the Catoctin
Furnace had been nurtured by
John B. Kunkel to the greatest
scope of production it would ever
experience. During this time, the
third stack was built and named
for Kunkel’s wife, Deborah. Kunkel
passed away in 1885—his wife in
1882—and his estate was left to
the control of his children. The
heirs placed their father’s trusted
bookkeeper, Mr. Waesche, in control
of the enterprise, a businessman
who knew a railroad would further
develop commerce for the furnace.
On March 19, 1886, the MVRR
received its incorporation certificate, conducting rod mounted to the car’s
listing Dr. Schley as President, and
Mrs. Steiner Schley, born Lillian
Kunkel to John Baker and Deborah
Bertrand Porter Kunkel, the link
to her husband’s investment in the
endeavor.
Between 1889 and 1900, the
Furnace’s livelihood declined.
After the turn of the century, L.R.
Waesche moved his family from
the Furnace to a Mechanicstown
The Catoctin Banner Newspaper
property he had formerly purchased
and constructed a section of his
railroad through. The Schley’s
continued to live on W. Church
Street in Frederick with two of their
four children, the two others taken
by illness during childhood. Their
daughter, Lilian Kunkel Schley,
would never marry, and their last
born, John Reading Schley, would
be killed at age twenty-four in a
military test flight accident in 1918 Henry Ford’s Model-T
in France, concluding this branch of
the Schley family. All six are buried approximately $950 in
at Mt. Olivet Cemetery.
In 1908, the MVRR was sold
to the Washington Frederick &
Gettysburg Railway Company
(WF&G). Monocacy Valley
President Schley and L.R. Waesche,
and Waesche’s sons, Donald
(thirty-six years old) and Russell
(twenty-two years old)—all
directors—resigned. That same year,
bids were submitted to continue
WF&G rails from Frederick to
meet the Monocacy Valley line near
Lewistown. Upon completion, this
connection was utilized as a Trolley
line under the recognition of the
H&F (Hagerstown & Frederick)
Railway. The years between 1913
and 1926 marked the Trolley’s
heyday. The year 1915 almost saw
the extension of the Thurmont
line to Emmitsburg by route of
Franklinville and St. Anthony’s, but, people from trolleys to state
to the dismay of northern residents,
this idea was never realized. In
1920, H&F Trolleys carried a
healthy 3.8 million passengers.
The majority of H&F streetcars
acquired were used, the last new
model purchased in 1921 and
manufactured by the J.G. Brill
Company of Philadelphia. Brill
was the largest manufacturer of
“Interurban Coaches” for nearly
seventy years, owning plants in
six U.S. States, as well as Canada
and France. Trolleys were electric,
pulling current from power lines,
paralleling their tracks through a
roof. The electric lines positioned
to power the trolleys also allowed
the movement of electricity for
commercial use by the railway
company. By 1922, sixty-seven
percent of the H&F’s revenue came
from selling power to farms, homes,
and businesses. At this point, the
H&F became Potomac Public
Service, and in 1923, Potomac
Edison, but was seldom referred
www.TheCatoctinBanner.com
Photo Courtesy of rmossphotography.com, taken by Reuben Moss
Then
to as anything but
the H&F.
This was the peak of
Maryland’s trolley age.
In 1922, the price of
had fallen from
1910, to around $348,
the rise of personal transportation
slowed heavily by 1930, the number
of trolley passengers narrowing to
1.5 million that year. Trolley cars
were modified to carry more freight
than riders, seen as coach windows
were covered with the solid paneling
used for cargo areas. World War I
gas rationing resurrected the trolley, station and scenery along the route,
especially the freight division, but
this boom was only temporary.
Nevertheless, the Thurmont
trolley continued to run until 1954.
The Thurmont line was laid from
5th Street in Frederick, through
Hood Women’s College, along
Rosemont Avenue past Ft. Detrick
and on through Yellow Springs,
Lewistown, and Catoctin Furnace to
Thurmont. Now many households
owned two vehicles, replacing
highways that required increasingly
dangerous crossing by the trolley.
Occasionally, trolley accidents made
headlines, such as one reported by
the 1953 Frederick News, regarding
a York, PA auto-passenger’s death
by broken neck, which on-duty
H&F Coach Motorman H.J. Brown
described, after a ’47 Chevrolet
Coupe struck the trolley as it
diagonally crossed Rt. 15 in front
of Catoctin Manor one Saturday
night. Brown reported both vehicle
occupants were thrown through
the windshield and the Coupe
demolished, none aboard the trolley
were hurt.
On the last day of service,
seventeen-year-old Carroll James
conducted a live radio-broadcast
from car 172, the last newly
purchased trolley from 1921.
James interviewed Potomac Edison
President Paul Smith, who even
took the car’s controls for a time
Published by www.EPlusPromotes.com
(left) Old photo of the
trolley crossing one of the
old bridges, after crossing
Hessong Bridge Road to
pass alongside the Firor
Farm.
(below) Photo taken of the
site as it looks today.
Now
Courtesy Photo
and conversed how he had ridden
the first streetcar to Thurmont, and
now the last. In Frederick, the young
women of Hood College presented
the trolley with songs and flowers
as it moved through the campus for
the last time. February 20, 1954,
marked the final trolley operation in
all of Maryland. Scenes from these
lost days were recognized by famous
Baltimore Sun photojournalist,
Aubrey Bodine, in a 1951 photo-
story, featuring the H&F. Bodine’s
romantic fascination with “old times
and old things” included images of
the potbelly stove in the Thurmont
from in and outside of the trolley
car. Bodine’s photograph “Misty
Harbor” of a Baltimore tugboat is
currently selling for $80,000.
The rails from the top of
Carroll Street in Thurmont to Ft.
Detrick were removed in 1958;
the remaining fragment to the
H&F station on East Patrick St. in
Frederick has disappeared since,
as well. In 1994, fifty-seven-year-
old Carroll James would say in his
“The H&F: Trolleys Through the
Heart of Maryland” documentary
that any H&F motorman would
agree that each trolley was its own
being, a living object with its own
personality and temperament and in
no way a simple, inanimate object.
Today, buildings, bridge abutments,
road beds, and grade mounds mark
the landscape along the route the
trolley once traveled. The path
to Frederick is easily followed
from Thurmont by tracing these
abandoned features, in addition to
the pole-lines left along the route
like breadcrumbs dropped by No.
172 on that final passage.